Husband Sues Hospital for Racism in Black Mom’s Death Hours After Giving Birth

Charles Johnson IV, whose wife, Kira Dixon Johnson, died in 2020 about 12 hours after giving birth to their second child in a scheduled cesarean section performed in just 17 minutes, said he is suing Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for racism. While Kira Johnson, 39, was bleeding internally, the hospital took hours to return her to the operating room despite her husband’s pleas, his suit said, with a nurse telling him at one point that his wife wasn’t a priority. At a press conference outside the hospital on Friday, he said depositions in his ongoing wrongful death suit against the hospital show that “my wife would be here today and be here Sunday celebrating Mother’s Day with her boys if she was a Caucasian woman.” “I’m sorry. We failed your family,” OB-GYN chair Dr. Sarah Kilpatrick said she told Charles Johnson in her deposition. “This shouldn’t have happened.” Angelique Washington, a Black surgical technologist, testified that “patient safety was out the door” when Kira Johnson came into the operating room. In a statement, the hospital said it rejected “any mischaracterization of our culture and values” and that “We commend Mr. Johnson for the attention he has brought to the important issue of racial disparities in maternal outcomes.”